Rome has been good to us...

Saturday we went to the Colosseum and it was really spectacular. I sat there for a few hours with my ipod on and stared in awe while I sketched and painted. Earlier in the week we ran into Olga Macaluso when we shorted out the power in Silvio's Apartment. Olga is also a successful painter and theatre performer like Silvio, her website is: http://www.olgamacaluso.com

With Marsha translating at her side, she took us out to the nicest dinner all four of us have had this entire trip. We had an amazing feast and even though she did not speak english she made a wonderful effort to try to get to know us through translation. Afterwards we went back to Silvio's and she looked at our paintings and drawings. She gave us some wonderful and strange feedback. I am really excited that we have made these wonderful connections and i hope to return to Europe and study with these talented artists.

Yesterday Trina, Travis, and I went to the Modern Art Museum in Villa Borghese and it was amazing! I wrote down to many artists to try to compress to this small paragraph. It was worth my 9 euro and i spent all day there.

Today we are off to see the Academy here in Rome as well as some other galleries. We might go to Pantheon, then tomorrow we head back to Florence to catch our flights back to the real world!

I am ready to go home and take care of my visa for China, then i am off to Mexico for a week or so...

CIAO

ROMA

Rome is a pretty intense city. As soon as i stepped off the train, it felt more different than any of the other places we had visited. I had mentioned before that Florence felt like a cleaner safer version of Guadalajara, well Rome feels just like Guadalajara. Its fast paced, event filled, and there are always people everywhere.

We are staying right next to the Piazza Popolo where Santa Maria del Popolo is located...that houses two Caravaggios. Again, we are staying at Silvio Benedetto's Studio in Rome, he is the artist from Argentina that we met earlier in the trip. his website is : http://www.silviobenedetto.com . He is a pretty amazing guy with an even more amazing, creepy, quirky home. His home is definitely an artist residence and it is like a small museum, we have been drawing inside there for the past three days...

Yesterday we went to the Galleria Borghese and today to the Vatican. I have been slammed with art these past days...some of the highlights were: Caravaggio, Corregio, Da Vinci, Bernini, Bacon, Orozco, and of course that Sistine Chapel.

Tomorrow we go to see ruins with more stories to come...

Ciao

Siena

It was pouring today! We got slammed with rain on our travel day from Riomaggiore to Siena. After three confusing transfers, we finally made it to the train station here. Trina, Jess, and I hopped on a bus and got to see an accidental tour of the countryside. The bus we got on was the correct one, but we just didn't wait long enough, so we got off to early and ended up walking twenty minutes into the city walls. This city is like a playground, so many stairs, hills, nooks, and crannies. We took a walk around and grabbed some dinner. We are in a wonderful hostel that houses students from the UC System that study Italian here. It has a roomy bathroom and a common room where we are watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith in Italian. We have free internet and an awesome view....a slice of heaven. Tomorrow we are off to paint in the morning.

CIAO

So like wow...

My companions on this trip are Jessica, Trina, and Travis. I am quite lucky to have them here and we make a wonderful, awkward, dynamic group. There is a muralist an mosaic artist that works in Cinque Terre and Jessica went to investigate him while he worked on one of his murals. His name is Silvio Benedetto and he is from Argentina. Aside from being amazinly telented he is qute kind and offered us his studio in Rome for us to stay...yes that means a free place to stay in Rome for a week...did i mention it is in the center of the city? Aside from that he also invited the four of us to participate in a 3 week mural workshop starting on the 20th of this month. Although i won't be able to participate, i may come join for the first day then return next year to participate for the full program. It sounds amazing and i can converse with him freely with my spanish, but Fiesta is coming up, a potential Mexico trip in the coming weeks, along with the move to China on the 24th of August.

I am now in La Spezia on my way up the hill to Portovenere to hike and swim!!!

CIAO

Luis

Lucca to Cinque Terre

So our current location is Riomaggiore and it is epic.  It is one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre.  These warm colored buildings are layered on the coastal rocks and so is our hostel.  We have been going swimming and i now have a tan....first time ever.  Two days ago we hiked all five towns in about 4 hours.  It was the most physically strenuous trek i have taken this trip.  The group stayed together and we sweated it out.  The views were amazing and i can't wait to show off these photos...

more to come from Siena

CIAO

Luis

Yes i am that guy.....

I am that guy who does not update his blog because he gets caught up in the exoticism of said country... i am sorry!

Well right now i am in an internet cafe in Lucca and it is the most amazing little city ever. It is smack dab in between Pisa and Florence. It is very compact and impossible tog et lost in due to its walls that enclose it. These walls were built for protection from enemies whent the city was first built...now it serves as a wonderful place to take bike rides on. We looped the whole city on our bikes in about 20 minutes. We spent all morning in the train station because we bought tickets at the automated machines to go to Pisa, we soon discovered that the train workers were on strike and spent an hour in line getting our refunds. Our friend Travis Parker was supposed to be in Switzerland today, but ended up staying with us tonight again due to the train situation. The strike is supposed to end at 9 pm tonight, which is wonderful due to our reservation in Cinque Terre for the coming days.

On a side note, i still cannot upload photos here. I just attempted it here on blogger as well as on myspace and cannot find success in either...so i must wait until i return to upload these suckers.

The three week study program was pretty amazing. The first week we studied tempera painting with Granchi, the second we studied watercolor with Steinberg, the third we studied oil painting with Cretara, and the last was life drawing with Scolini. Like i said before, every morning we would go to museums and churches. The highlights for me. were the Academia and the Uffizi. Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures of the prisoners escaping from the marble were breathtaking. At the Uffizi were so many paintings and drawings that i cannot sum up in a paragraph. I liked the Michelangelo, Del Sarto, Lippi, Rembrandt and Titians...i did soem sketching in there and got some bad stares for standing so long in front of paintings.

Once we were done with the program and we set up our artwork in the rooms and the teachers chose our work for the gallery show. There was a mess up apparantly, i was supposed to have 3 pieces in the show, but only got two in....bad communication i guess. At the show we all acted obnoxious by taking millions of photos and said goodbye to the amazing group of people that enhanced this experience so much. Domenic Cretara also announced the 10 art pieces that were chosen to be displayed at the CSU Chancellors office for the year. One of my landscape paintings was chosen and will be displayed for a year, along with it getting framed and printed in a little catalog book! I am pretty happy about that and if anybody is in Long Beach, you should go see it.

Well, for right now i cannot think of anything else...if anybody has questions then drop me an email and i shall try to reply. Luiseltarugito@gmail.com


CIAO